As is known today, more and more companies that rely on computing technology are adopting the approach of owning nearly no physical computing assets themselves, but rather have turned to the information technology (IT) computing model known as “cloud computing.” For example, as per the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST Special Publication No. 800-145), cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
In this environment, service providers offer many cloud services, in accordance with the cloud computing paradigm, that can provide desired functions and features to a company or other entity. As such, IT administrators (individuals or groups that manage, or at least assist with, IT assets and issues for an entity such as an enterprise or business) have a choice of hosting their applications and data in a multi cloud environment which may include public clouds as well as their own private cloud.
Cloud services from multiple vendors are characterized by different service level agreements (SLAs), different technology infrastructure and different price points. As applications and cloud services become more and more complex, there is a need for assisting the IT administrator in traversing these complex and dynamic computing environments.